Lily (7 page)

“In the one-and-a-quarter?”

“Probably. Either that or the mile-and-a-half.”

“He’ll want to watch out for the turn at Tattenham Corner, won’t he? And the descent after it can be a trial for a young horse. But he looks like a goer to me.” She remembered herself. “Sure and he’s a foine animal, I’m thinkin’.”

Clay was staring at her in open surprise. With the bit halfway into the animal’s mouth, MacLeaf’s hands went still and he turned to look at her, too.

Lily cleared her throat self-consciously. “Me father was after bein’ a racin’ man. Used to take me about to some of the meetings, Doncaster and Newmarket and … such.”

“A racing man?”

“Well, more a bettin’ man, as you might say. He was especially good at losin’,” she admitted candidly. “But once his two-year-old filly won the sweepstake purse at the St. Leger. Twenty-five guineas, that was.” She smiled, recalling it. She’d tried to talk him into paying off some of his debts with the winnings, but with no success—he’d treated his friends to a two-day celebration and spent every penny of it in a Parkhill tavern.

Clay and MacLeaf exchanged looks. The stableman led the horse outside to the hard-packed yard. Disdaining the mounting block, Clay leaped to his back. He turned in the saddle to look back at Lily, who stood in the doorway watching him. “I’m going up to Tattersall’s in August, Miss Lily Troublefield. Would you care to come along and help me pick out a pair of fine, strong hunters?”

She laughed. “Ask me closer to the time, Mr. Darkwell; I can never be plannin’ so far in advance.”

“I might just do that.” With a grin and a wink, he turned his horse and nudged it into a jaunty trot and then, very quickly, an elegant canter.

MacLeaf came toward her, grinning his gap-toothed grin. She smiled back at him. Sometimes she had trouble deciding which of his eyes to focus on when she spoke to him. Usually his right eye slanted off a bit to the side; but as soon as she’d fix him with a stare to his left, as often as not that one would go sliding off and the right one would seem to straighten itself out. It was a most disconcerting thing, and sometimes she wondered if he could possibly be doing it on purpose.

“How are you going along, Galen?” she asked amiably.

“Oh, well-a-fine, thank ee for asking. An’ you, Miss Lily?”

“I’m very brave. I’ve a message for you from Lowdy.”

He made a great business of looking disappointed. “Tedn from your fair self, an?”

She lifted a shoulder playfully. “Lowdy says she can meet you tonight after supper beside the lake, but only for an hour.”

His expressive face lit up. “You d’ tell ‘er I’ll be there.” Then he remembered that he was a rake. “Will you be there with ‘er, Miss Lily?” he inquired with a waggish leer.

“No indeed, I won’t, Mr. MacLeaf.”

“Ah, too bad. We should’ve been a rare boiling, us three.” He rested his hand on the wall behind her and leaned close in a most familiar way. “What’s that owl-faced cook makin’ me for dinner today, my heart?”

She smiled blandly. She’d have enjoyed flirting with Galen MacLeaf if Lowdy hadn’t liked him so much. “Veal cutlets for Mrs. Howe in her room, hashed mackerel and potatoes for the rest of us in the hall.”

“The devil you say!”

She laughed out loud at his comical expression. Over his shoulder, she caught sight of two men approaching from the house. One was Francis Morgan; the other was the master.

Some instinct made her jump sideways, away from MacLeaf’s arm-barrier against the stable door. It occurred to her afterward that the sudden movement had a guilty look about it. The men walked past. Francis Morgan kept talking and didn’t see her. But the master’s austere gaze raked her with a look that, in her agitation, Lily took for scorn. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Devon Darkwell though she’d been trysting with the stableman.

What surprised her was the urgency of the impulse she felt to go after him and set him straight. Of course she did no such thing. She interrupted MacLeaf in the middle of a sentence and excused herself, explaining that the housekeeper would scold her if she stayed away any longer. Then she hurried back to the house. That afternoon, Mrs. Howe set her to washing the scullery walls as a punishment for being late.

“B
Y
J
AKES,
I
T’S HOT!”
Lowdy thumped her heels and fists against the mattress in sweaty irritation and leapt out of bed. “Thur bain’t a whiff o’ breeze blawin’ in th’ whole blighted county, I’m bound. Lord’s my life, I hate June.”

Lily wiped away the perspiration under her nose and groaned agreement, too enervated to speak. She was sitting up in bed, slouched against the headrail, weary but loath to lie down because the damp sheets smelled of mildew and stuck to her skin. Through the open window came the chime of the clock in the library two floors below, counting out midnight.

Lowdy went to kneel on the chair under the window, elbows on the sill, and stared up at the face of the full moon. “Do ee think Galen’s lookin’ up right now,” she mused dreamily, “seein’ the selfsame moon I’m starin’ at?”

Lily tried to picture it, and couldn’t help wondering which eye he would be staring at it with. “I expect he’s been fast asleep these two hours or more. As you and I should be.” She’d stopped struggling with an Irish accent for Lowdy’s benefit days ago; the story she’d made up to account for using it in the first place—that she’d been running away from an abusive uncle and had hoped she would sound more like an experienced housemaid if she said she was Irish—hadn’t sounded very believable in her own ears, but Lowdy had never questioned it.

Her stomach growled. Across the room, Lowdy heard. “Lily!” she exclaimed, plain face alight. “I’m just now rememberin’—I filched us a red apple from the resters in the stillroom this mornin’!”

“Glory be to God, Lowdy, hurry and get it before I faint dead away,” Lily urged dramatically.

The maid found the stolen treat in her apron and brought it to the bed. A month ago Lily would have gone proudly to the stocks without a murmur before she’d have taken a farthing from her worst enemy. Now Lowdy’s near-daily pilfering of a piece of fruit or a chunk of bread seemed a logical, cold-blooded act of survival, something to feel no more guilt over than a soldier might for shooting back at his foes. She sank her teeth into her carefully apportioned half of apple, savoring the tart spurt of juice in her mouth and making small sighing sounds of satisfaction. “I’m beginning to think they taste better stolen,” she sighed, her eyes closed in pure pleasure.

“Tes a fact, they do,” Lowdy confirmed with her mouth full.

“But still, you’re taking an awful chance. If Mrs. Howe ever caught you, I’m sure you’d lose your place.”

“Don’t ee worry an inch, she ain’t going to catch me. Did ee talk to ’er today, an? About your ‘advance?’ “

“Yes.”

“And did ‘er turn you down, like I said?”

“Yes.”

“Hah.”

Lily drooped against the pillow, remembering her meeting with Mrs. Howe this afternoon. She’d chosen the time herself, hoping the housekeeper would be at her most agreeable after a supper of cold salmon, broiled neck of mutton with capers, and fresh peas in lemon sauce—a cut above the barley soup and liver pudding that had been the fare in the servants’ hall. “What do you want?” Mrs. Howe had asked in her ungracious way, ensconced in her comfortable sitting room.

Lily made her request—a small advance on the salary she would begin to earn once her debts were finally paid off, so that she could start setting a little something by of her own. As Lowdy had gloomily foreseen, she might as well have saved her breath.

“Think you’re too good for the rest of us, don’t you? Can’t wait to get away so you can put on all your fine airs among grander folk, eh?” Her black, bulging eyes snapped with venom. “I’ll tell you how you can get away, you ignorant girl. You can earn your wage like the rest of us, the way the almighty God intended—with the sweat o’ your brow and the labor o’ your own two hands. ‘He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.’ ” A crafty smile crawled across her unkind face after that pronouncement. “Why, I’ll even help you. I’ll let you have extra chores, if that’s what you want. You can start with the rugs on the first floor. At the end of each day, after all your other work’s done, you can roll one up, drag it outside, hang it on a line, and beat it until it’s clean and fresh. I’ll inspect it afterward, naturally, and pay you a half-penny for each one if I’m satisfied.”

“Half a penny! But—I couldn’t even lift one of the carpets by myself!”

“That’s your lookout. And don’t be thinking you’ll ask any o’ the other girls to help; this would be your work, no one else’s. Now, take my offer or not, it’s the best you’ll get … What do you say? Be quick—there’s chores to do.”

She’d had to blink back tears of frustration. “You know I can’t!”

“Have done, then. Stop wasting my time and get back to work. And remember that it’s the duty of servants to perform the will of God from the heart, ‘not with eyeservice as men-pleasers, but with fear and trembling, as unto Christ.’ ”

“Splatty ol’ pig,” Lowdy said matter-of-factly, swallowing the last bit of apple and licking her fingers. “I telled you not t’ waste time wi’ that one.”

“She doesn’t like me, Lowdy.”

“She don’t like anybody.”

“No, but—I truly think she hates me.”

Lowdy made a face, but didn’t dispute it.

Lily plucked at the coverlet, feeling the familiar weight of frustration. She’d been at Darkstone for weeks now, but she was no closer to a solution to her predicament. Her first month’s wages had come to nothing, and now she was in debt not only to Mrs. Howe but to Lowdy as well, for soap, tooth powder, cap, and aprons. She ought to write to Mrs. Troublefield, her neighbor in Lyme, and ask for news. She needed to know what had become of Roger Soames, to find out if he was alive or dead and, if the former, what state of mind he might be in regarding herself. Had he set the authorities to search for her? Did he still claim she was a thief? Or, by some miracle, had he come to his senses and forgiven her out of Christian charity for her part in the fiasco that had brought her to this place?

That last seemed unlikely. But Lily was an optimist; she would not dismiss the possibility out of hand. Still, she hesitated to find out by writing to Mrs. Troublefield, because she hated to involve that kind woman by putting her in a position, if someday she should be questioned, of having to lie for Lily’s sake and say she didn’t know where she’d gone. For the dozenth time she berated herself for running away. Time was her only ally now, and all she could do was cling to a childlike hope that someday, somehow, things would be all right again.

“Ugh,” Lowdy grunted suddenly, sitting up in the bed. “The devil ’imself ’ud melt like tallow grease in this oven. Lily.”

“What?”

“Let’s go swimmin’.”

“We can’t.”

“Why not? Not in the sea, in the lake. Pirate’s Mere, ’aven’t ee ever been there? Nobody’d see, we’d sneak out quiet-like as mouses.”

“It’s too dangerous—if anyone caught us we’d get sacked.” But even so, she couldn’t help imagining it, how cool and lovely a swim would be.

“Well, you d’ come or not, Miss Scairty-face, but I’m goin’.” And she threw off her dingy nightrail and began to pull her dress on over her head. “I ain’t wearin’ shift nor stays, neither. Ooh, how cool an’ clean I mean t’ be ten minutes from now. I’ll come back an’ tell all how it was, Lily, make it like ee didn’t miss nothing.”

“Oh, all right,” Lily grumbled, climbing off the bed and fumbling in the dark for her own dress. “But if we’re caught, it’ll be your fault.”

“We won’t get catched. We’ll sneak out master’s lib’ry door and scuttle down the cliff steps all unknown. Now, hurry!”

Darkstone Manor faced north, away from the sea, at the top of a broad, green headland. Terraced gardens sloped behind it for a hundred yards before the cliff’s edge, gentling the precariousness of the aspect. Along the headland a twisting path wound away for a mile in either direction. At the bottom of steep steps leading to the sea, another path curved to the right and rose again, skirting a dark pine wood before it came out at the top of an inland body of water—Pirate’s Mere. It was a natural oddity, its shallow waters divided from the sea by a wide bar of white sand. Tonight it was dark and still and tranquil, in contrast to the surging, whitecapped Channel so close by. Lily and Lowdy undressed beside a line of high black boulders bisecting the narrow beach.

“You bain’t goin’ in in your shift, surely.”

Lily glanced across at Lowdy’s sturdy nakedness. She frowned. “You’re not wearing anything at all?”

“Phaw, sink me if I will! What was ee plannin’ t’ wear tomorrow for shift, an? ‘Twouldn’t ever dry by time. Come, Lily, quit your moolin’ an’ let’s go in.”

Lily hesitated a few more seconds, considering. She drew off her worn and patched chemise slowly, cautiously, not quite knowing what to expect. She’d never been naked out-of-doors before. But nothing happened: dozens of heads didn’t pop up from the thick woods behind to shout, “Cover yourself!” as she’d half anticipated. And the soft night air on her skin was delicious. Looking down at her own white breasts and belly and thighs, she shivered with an illicit thrill; she’d thought the stealing of apples an exciting sin, but it paled to paltry insignificance next to naked midnight bathing.

She stepped with great care over smooth stones and soft sand toward the mere’s edge—she’d never been barefoot outdoors, either. Gentle lapping waves wet her toes; she moved farther in warily. “Come in all at onct,” Lowdy advised from fifteen feet out. “Tes warm-like and lovely in no time.”

“But I can’t swim.”

“Neither can I; I’m standin’ on my two feet.”

Emboldened, Lily waded in to her waist, her breath sucked in at the unexpected chill. But in seconds it felt warm and luscious, and she bent her knees and let the water rise to her shoulders. “Oh, it’s wonderful, it’s glorious!” she laughed, splashing her arms. She paddled over to Lowdy, where the water was deeper. The muddy bottom felt cold and squishy between her toes. “Oh, you can float,” she said enviously.